Style Guidelines for Authors

- THE PROCESS -

What will the copy editor do?

Copy editors are concerned above all with sense, style, consistency, and economy. They will ask questions when aspects of the text don’t seem to add up. They will make your manuscript conform to house style (our preferred system of spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and so forth). They will ensure that a manuscript is stylistically consistent. And they will omit or flag redundancy.

We don’t do fact checking to any great extent, as the peer review process and your revision should have already ensured that form of accuracy. The cleaner your manuscript is on submission, the more time your copy editor will be able to devote to additional stylistic polishing. Similarly, if the documentation (notes and bibliography) requires a lot of editing, fewer resources will be devoted to overall style.

Why is less more?

The editing process pares down the text to reveal its subject in the clearest form and to get rid of extraneous detail. If you’re not sure whether something is truly necessary, it probably isn’t. Trust readers to be able to find their way around the text. They don’t need you to tell them what has just been discussed or what is about to be discussed. Recapping and signposting can make a work self-conscious.

Chapter titles should be balanced in length and style. Please don’t call one chapter “The Great War” and the next “Postwar Disruption: Social and Economic Chaos in the Service Sector, 1946-50.” Very long titles can be unwieldy.

Subheadings should also ideally be short and evocative. You don’t need to include every concept that will be discussed in the section. You also don’t need to litter the text with subheadings.

What are my responsibilities as a collection editor?

If you’ve edited a volume of essays, the style and standardization issues are more complex. Consult our collections guidelines for an outline of the process.

- THE TEXT -

What should I include?

Please include all the material you intend to see in the final book. If you’re going to have a dedication or acknowledgments or photo captions, for example, send them with the manuscript. If you think they might change, let your editor know. Consult our author checklist for details about the physical submission of the manuscript.

What’s the difference between a manuscript and a book?

Your manuscript is a transitional document intended purely to convey content. All its elements will be designed and formatted before being turned into page proofs. Page numbers, fonts, type size, and the arrangement of parts can change. The more formatting you put in your manuscript, therefore, the more will have to be removed, so please keep it simple.

What’s the difference between a foreword, a preface, and an introduction, and do I need them?

A foreword is a short essay of no more than two or three pages, usually written by an eminent person in the same field as the author. They can add profile to a work, but it is not necessary to pursue one.

A preface is a forum in which to explain why you pursued this work and how you did it. It isn’t about the subject of the book but about the book itself: its origins and process. Here is the place to describe the structure of the work, such as why you divided it into parts or how the chapters are grouped. You can include acknowledgments in the preface too, but if they are substantial, you may prefer to write them separately.

An introduction is just that: an introduction to your subject matter. It is an integral part of the subject but deals with it as a whole. A chapter deals with a single aspect. An introduction is not Chapter 1, so decide whether you’re writing an introduction or a chapter and name it accordingly.

Having a preface and/or introduction depends on how self-explanatory you think the rest of the work is. Will the reader feel a lack? Will an introduction simply repeat points in the text?

- THE DOCUMENTATION -

What are the options?

There are two main types of documentation: humanities style, which consists of endnotes and a bibliography; and author-date style, which comprises in-text citations of author and year and a reference list at the back of the book. For an in-depth guide to both forms, consult The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition. If you’d like to see full sample citations for both styles, please consult our documentation examples.

If the documentation style of your manuscript is more specialized to your discipline, e.g., law, psychology, or natural sciences, consult your in-house editor and follow the style manual that is recommended in your field, e.g., McGill Guide, APA, etc.

Web citation is an evolving field. Because websites change so rapidly, long URL strings will date quickly. More useful is to provide the name of the organization, the URL of the home page, and the specific document or section of the site you are referring to. It is important to ensure that your final manuscript contains only current URLs. If you did your Web research some time ago, you’ll need to review the citations.

May I use a hybrid style?

Please choose one style and stick to it. If you have settled on author-date, for example, you must use in-text citations. You cannot use endnotes such as this:

1    Brown 1992, 213-14.
2    Smith 1998; Jones 2006, 103.

Your only endnotes will be content based, such as this:

1    Smith (1998) makes the same point but with a very different conclusion, namely that brown eggs are in fact healthier than white ones.

Why are completeness and consistency so vital?

Whatever style of documentation you use, the key is to be complete and consistent so that the reader doesn’t have to work harder than necessary. Include all publication details: author, title, subtitle, editor, volume number, edition, city of publication, publisher, and pages cited. If you are citing a book, include the subtitle as well as the title. If you are citing a newspaper, include the author of the article and the section and page number. You will be asked to go back and fill in the gaps if information is missing.

If you have notes, please provide the full publication information for a citation the first time it occurs within each chapter. Thereafter you can refer to it by author surname and short title, or by “ibid.” if it occurs in the directly preceding note, like this:

1     Julian Bond, “Victorian Silhouettes,” Journal of Victoriana 3, 4 (1999): 213-14.
2     John Grant Malcolmson, “A Box of Medals,” BC Studies 26 (2006): 108-9.
3     Ibid., 122.
4     Bond, “Victorian Silhouettes,” 219.

Consistency is essential in any form of documentation. If you’re editing a collection, you must ensure that every contributor uses the same documentation style. If they haven’t, it’s your responsibility to convert the documentation to a single style.

You also need to be consistent about such details as the way in which titles are capitalized (“The Quick Brown Fox Jumped over the Lazy Dog” OR “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog”); providing both volume and issue number for periodicals; and whether you use “ed.” or “edited by.” There are myriad variations on documentation. Consistency ensures that it is logical and easy to use.

When do I need a bibliography and what kind?

Only if the endnotes contain full publication information is it feasible to forego a bibliography altogether. If the endnotes are extensive, you may wish to produce a selected bibliography or a bibliographical essay. These give added value by imposing a selection process. You’re offering the benefit of your judgment in choosing the most pertinent and important works on your subject.

If you divide your bibliography into sections, keep them simple. You don’t need to separate primary and secondary published material, or keep books separate from articles or from dissertations. The sections should be designed to make the references easier to find, so it is a good idea to group archival material, subdivided by archive. For sources generally available in a library, however, an alphabetical list obviates the need for further classification.

What should a reference list contain?

A manuscript using the author-date system must contain an alphabetized reference list that supplies the complete publication data for each citation. All in-text citations are cited in the reference list, and vice versa. It is not desirable to include works in the reference list that aren’t cited in the text, but if you have a reason for doing so, please discuss it with your editor.

How much documentation is too much?

It’s tempting to document every detail in an effort to be scrupulous. This can result in 100 or more notes per chapter, which is rarely necessary or desirable. While a dissertation must call attention to its authorities, a book has less obligation to do so. Of course you need to acknowledge intellectual debt, but avoid fatiguing your reader with excessive documentation.

Please do not have more than one note per sentence, and consider citing multiple sources for a paragraph within a single note at the end. If you do so and the paragraph contains several quotations, remember to indicate which source refers to which quotation.

Avoid “chains of ibids.” If you have multiple notes in a sequence, all referring to the same source, consider combining them into a single note for the discussion as a whole.

- QUOTATION -

Why should I use my own words when another source is authoritative?

It can be very tempting to quote extensively, but bear in mind that this is your work. If a source has something unique to say, or says something important in a unique way, then quote it but don’t hesitate to use your own words just because you’re treading on ground that has been covered elsewhere. Overquoting disrupts the rhythm of the prose. As well, too much quotation will necessitate obtaining permission from the source.

Short quoted phrases or expressions do not necessarily need quotation marks if their phrasing is unremarkable and the source has already been identified.

Avoid scare quotes. These are quotation marks around a phrase to signify irony or question intention:

     The “humour” of the postmodern poet is profoundly serious.

They can be a useful tool but only when sparingly applied. Their power decreases with each use.

Should I practise a certain je ne sais quoi?

Avoid quoting in other languages, or provide a translation. It cannot be assumed that readers know French or German or Latin, and it is alienating to encounter unintelligible prose in the middle of a work. If it’s important to provide the original language as well as a translation, consider providing the non-English text in a note.

Similarly, avoid using non-English tag phrases when serviceable English phrases are available. Why use contra for contrary to or ceteris paribus when you mean other things being equal?

- PERMISSIONS AND SOURCES -

All textual and visual material in your manuscript that comes from other sources must be documented and permission to reproduce it obtained if applicable. Quotations of 300 words or more require permission, for example, as do more than 4 lines of poetry. Please consult our permissions guidelines for specifics.

It is also incumbent on you to identify the sources of your material, even if formal permission is unnecessary. Just as you cite the sources of all direct quotations, so you must cite the sources of tables, maps, figures, and illustrations. You must also acknowledge sources of table and figure data, map data (if you have created maps based on other published sources), and, of course, intellectual debt (original ideas that are not your own).

- HISTORICAL AND GENDER ISSUES -

While you’ll want to use historically accurate language – settlers were granted lots by the acre, not the hectare, for example – your voice is distinct from your subject. You do not need to assume the outmoded terminology or gender bias of your material. You need to be clear when you are writing as a contemporary scholar, using the language of today and the perspective of today, and when you are referring to historical terms or prejudices. 

- NON-TEXTUAL MATERIAL -

When should I use photos?

A good picture is worth a thousand words, but a bad picture is worth very little. If your work includes photographs, be selective. Does the image support a point in the text? Does it convey something that words cannot convey? To be appropriate, it ought to do both. Do your photographs represent the subject matter broadly enough, or does their content tend to cluster them into one part of the manuscript? Have they already been published widely?

What is a genuine table and when should I include one?

A table enables you to present a lot of data – individual items that are similar in kind – with a visually easy way to compare them. It should be as simple as possible and must be understood without reference to the text. It does not merely repeat information available in the text but supports with specifics the general points made in the text. If it doesn’t add any new material, it should not be included.

A table must be compiled and edited as carefully as a piece of text. It should have internal coherence, and like good academic prose, should be spare and transparent.

How do I make a table?

A table consists of two sets of data: dependent and independent variables. The independent variables usually go in the first column, and the dependent ones across the first row, as column headings. These are like the axes on a graph. The first column might contain, for example, a set of years or occupations or regions. The column heads might list percentage versus number of votes or mean versus average rainfall. A list has only one set of variables and is therefore not a table.

Try to order these sets of variables in a logical way: alphabetically or chronologically for the independent ones, for example, and by their relationship to one another for the column headings.

When should I use figures (graphs, charts, diagrams, maps)?

As with photos and tables, figures should support the text, add another dimension, but be comprehensible on their own. Will the reader have difficulty picturing what is being discussed without visual support? Is a graph or chart the most efficient way to present the data? Does the map cover a region that is not well known?

Figures are subject to stringent technical standards at UBC Press, and they are the author’s financial responsibility. While we offer artwork guidelines if you decide to produce your own figures, you should recognize that technical illustration and cartography are specialized skills. The process will run more smoothly and the results will be better if you allow us to employ a professional on your behalf. Also, if your files are inadequate and we have to spend time making them print ready, you may be billed for the time and the publication date for your book may suffer.